Skip to content
Scan a barcode
Scan
Added to your cart
Paperback Change Your Underwear Twice a Week: Lessons from the Golden Age of Classroom Filmstrips Book

ISBN: 1579652638

ISBN13: 9781579652630

Change Your Underwear Twice a Week: Lessons from the Golden Age of Classroom Filmstrip

In the pre-Internet, pre-VCR--oh, go ahead, call them prehistoric--days of baby boomers' grade school, the high art of audiovisual classroom programming was the filmstrip. If you're old enough, you remember the darkened room, the hum of the projector, and the beeep that signaled the teacher to turn to the next frame. If you weren't busy shooting spitballs, filmstrips might even have taught you something about science, hygiene, the great bounty of American farms and factories. With simple illustrations and quaint photographs that evoke a more innocent era, Change Your Underwear Twice a Week is the first book to collect dozens of these filmstrip treasures together, creating a panorama of four decades of overlooked graphic design, popular culture, and inadvertent humor. Readers from the Internet generation will get a good chuckle over what appears to be electronic cave art. But you'll also discover one of the great subtexts of postwar American life. From the mid-1940s until the late 1960s, filmstrips were the coming attractions of capitalism and the American way, teaching youngsters how society wanted them to view the world. Filmstrips celebrated our foundering railroads ("Tommy Takes a Train Trip"), the space program ("The Moon, Our Nearest Neighbor"), and our trusted friend the butcher, the milkman, the mailman, and the cop. They taught us not to sit too close to our new TV sets and why we should change our underwear twice a week (presumably, Commies did this only once a week). A chronicle of America's filmstrip experience, Change Your Underwear Twice a Week is also a glimpse into the companies and eccentric pioneers who created these graphic gems and how they influenced several generations of American youth.

Recommended

Format: Paperback

Condition: Very Good

$5.89
Save $13.06!
List Price $18.95
Almost Gone, Only 4 Left!

Customer Reviews

6 customer ratings | 5 reviews

Rated 5 stars
A Nostalgic Look At A Time Gone By

There's something almost magical about filmstrips, even today. When I began teaching, it was in the mid-1980's and the school had a VCR. All the best educational materials were on video, but every time I found a filmstrip that might be useful and showed it to the class, it captured the students' imaginations the way that nothing else did. Sure they were old fashioned, and sometimes out of date, but the kids loved them. They...

2Report

Rated 5 stars
So happy!

I'm a great fan of vintage classroom filmstrips as well as the Bell & Howell projectors usually used to project them. This book filled my heart not with nostalgia, but the actual joy that invaded the entire classroom when the teacher said, "We're going to watch a filmstrip today, kids!" Even upon simply hearing about the project, the smells of my elementary school wafted into my nostrils from a long-lost file in my brain...

1Report

Rated 5 stars
hilarious

I didn't grow up in America, so these film strips are wholly alien to me... and a great discovery! The way they are presented, with dry wit and lots of information, sets them into a context that is relevant for today. A great gift, for my American and non-American friends alike!

1Report

Rated 5 stars
Nostalgia

I didn't grown up in America and sometimes when I see things about America on the TV news, I wonder how another English speaking country can be so different to mine - and then I read Danny's book and realised that it isn't. I think that producers of the film strips (as they were called in Australian schools) must have all come out of the same mould. It brought back memories of rainy Friday afternoon, when sport was cancelled...

0Report

Rated 5 stars
Excellent!

I'm not sure why the reviewer below only gave this three stars with such a nice review? But this book is a trip down memory lane, often funny and really quite beautiful and fun to look at. The images are amazingly reproduced, and the author gives context to the filmstrips, and organizes them by subject. I promise, you won't be disappointed. I had to buy another copy because a colleague took mine!

0Report

Copyright © 2025 Thriftbooks.com Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information | Cookie Policy | Cookie Preferences | Accessibility Statement
ThriftBooks ® and the ThriftBooks ® logo are registered trademarks of Thrift Books Global, LLC
GoDaddy Verified and Secured